Name: Eltz Castle in Germany: Would you like to live here?
Uploaded: 2024-12-31T07:16:43.000Z
Duration: 14 min 42 s
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Imagine waking up here, gazing out of the window from one of your many towers and surveying the surrounding forest in the morning sunshine.

Life in a fairytale castle, surely that's everyone's dream.

Today, I'm at Burg Ed's Castle to find out what it's really like.

This castle has been inhabited by the same family for over 800 years.

So they seem like the best people to ask.

The Eltz family have managed to keep the castle in their hands over the last eight centuries through careful diplomacy and smart marriages.

The castle even used to be featured on the 500 Deutsche Mark bill.

And the castle has become a particularly famous Instagram hotspot in recent years as well.

With over 100,000 posts, Instagram has helped the castle reach younger and more international tourists.

It's a 15 minute walk through the forest to get to the castle.

Hidden away in this wooded valley, it's several miles away from the closest town.

You would definitely have your own peace and quiet here.

I mean, wow, come on, that really does look like something out of a fairytale, right?

Burg Ed's was designed more for looks than defense.

It's more of a grand home than a medieval fortress.

It's a really nice walk here through the woods, but it might be a little bit inconvenient living in a castle that was tucked away in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, what if you wanted to order takeout in the middle of the night?

Although I guess if you lived in the castle, you would probably have a private chef.

We'll find out if that's really true later on.

Well, at first glance, it certainly seems quite impressive, doesn't it?

Burg Ed's was built in the prime of medieval castle construction, between the 11th and 13th centuries, deliberately near the Mosel River, historically one of the most important trade routes in Germany.

Nowadays, whilst it's obviously beautiful, I think living here could come with its challenges.

This seclusion that protected it in the past might make modern life here more remote than most of us are used to.

And these stone walls must be expensive to heat in the winter.

OK, now I want to see if other people can imagine living here and what it would be like.

Really nice, I would say, because in the middle of the forest and something like this, a huge It would be really nice to live in this kind of place.

But at night, I cannot imagine how it would be like.

I've already said during the tour that I have to marry the heir so that I can live here.

It would be awesome, because, you know, with the really beautiful views that we have around the area, it would be really, really beautiful.

I mean, to clean it would be quite difficult, but I guess if I have the money to live in a castle, I could have the money to have some people to help us.

Do you think, what would it be like to actually live here?

It's quite a medieval castle, it's maybe quite difficult to heat, especially with the upcoming oil crisis.

Alright, I'd be alright with that, I like the cold, so a couple of extra layers of clothing would be grand.

Maybe, you know, sheepskin or something like that.

Time to see what it looks like on the inside.

I want to find out what life here would have been like during medieval times, but also what it's like to live here today.

So of course we don't have any access into the private quarters of the family that lives here right now, but the man who resides over the whole castle, or the lord of the manor, I guess you could call him, has agreed to give me a private tour of the rest of the castle.

Count Jakob von Anso Eds took over the castle ownership from his father in 2018.

He has another home in the area, but regularly spends time here at Burg Eds, where he grew up.

When was the last time you actually spent the night here, is that something that you do often?

So the last time I spent the night here was about a week ago.

And is it something that you consider a luxury, being inside this castle?

I know a lot of people would, I wonder what it's like for you.

It's certainly special, I wouldn't necessarily call it luxury.

We do have all the modern amenities, but it's still a castle, and castles were never really luxurious, they were purpose-built, so it's not as luxurious as maybe someone would hope.

This castle certainly has a certain atmosphere, of course, is that something that you still experience?

Especially once people have left in the evenings and it gets quiet and you're in nature.

And there's also a kind of a sense of belonging here, where for some reason I just feel totally at home.

Well, perhaps you can show me around more of your home.

So one of my favorite features in this room is this alcove.

You had a problem because this is one of the lower floors, and you wanted to do many things here, amongst them also pray and read Mass.

But there was a law back then which stated that you weren't allowed to place yourself above God, and that also meant you weren't allowed to live above the house of God.

So the only way to do that was to build an alcove which had its own roof, and above the roof was only the sky.

And so you could still use the floor above whilst being able to read Mass here, and so you actually kept the law in letter, if not necessarily in spirit.

So the bed is actually a lot larger than it looks.

It's about 1 meter 80 wide and 2 meters 10 long.

And the reason for that is because the whole family would sleep in there.

So it would be both the parents as well as the children.

Well, it was in order to preserve the heat.

That's why you have the curtains, and that's also why it's built up, because you wanted to catch the rising heat.

That's why back then people usually climbed into bed, and today we usually fall into bed.

The theme painted across the bedroom walls is a playful one.

It's full of phallic and fertility symbols.

MUSIC So this is what you could imagine the living room of a wealthy family in medieval ages to have looked like.

One of the most visually attractive things are the two tapestries that are hanging here.

Now, tapestries evolved in the 14th century or even earlier because you would put cloth up in order to make the room warmer and more comfortable.

The walls are up to 1.5 meters thick, so obviously they were very cool.

The artists had heard stories of fabled plants and animals from people who had gone traveling around the world, but had never actually seen them themselves.

So the animals and plants you see here, you'll see some aspects that seem familiar, but overall they are, you know, not how the animals look in real life.

True, the faces are a little bit warped somehow.  Light was really expensive.

You only had candles, and so you built these in order to use the sunlight for as long as possible for working, because you couldn't afford to light candles all the time.

I mean, there's also something quite idyllic about looking out at that beautiful view and sitting at the window, isn't there?

It is, though I think back then people might not necessarily have had the time to spend idling and looking out.

Life in the medieval ages was very, very tough, and there was very little time to just idyllically look out and reflect on life.

So this is one of about 40 fireplaces in the castle, with about 80 rooms.

That means every second room had a fireplace, which was an extraordinary luxury at the time.

And they all had iron or cast iron backs, which heated up, and once they were hot, you could pick them up with certain tongs and bring them to the next room, which didn't have a fireplace, and that would give off the heat.

So a castle like this probably requires quite a lot of upkeep, am I right?

There's always something that needs to be done all the time.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Eltz Castle in Germany: Would you like to live here?

absolutely

crisis

doubt

necessarily